Sunday, September 10, 2006

There seems to be a tendency among people who are, for whatever reason, opposed to George W. Bush, to minimize any scourge he turns his attention to, be it the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Iranian nuclear armament, terrorism or fundamentalist Islam. Martin Amis has a long essay in the Observer (the Sunday edition of the Guardian; via Instapundit) in which he explores what should be self-evident:

I will spell this out, because it has not been broadly assimilated. The most extreme Islamists want to kill everyone on earth except the most extreme Islamists; but every jihadi sees the need for eliminating all non-Muslims, either by conversion or by execution. And we now know what happens when Islamism gets its hands on an army (Algeria) or on something resembling a nation state (Sudan). In the first case, the result was fratricide, with 100,000 dead; in the second, following the Islamist coup in 1989, the result has been a kind of rolling genocide, and the figure is perhaps two million.

I don't fully agree with either Amis's pessimistic appraisal of Islam in general today, or his optimistic prognosis of the future. Unlike him -- and perhaps because I am in India -- I see plenty of "moderate Islam," as he terms it, around me, though more and more Muslims are certainly getting radicalised, for a variety of complex reasons. Equally, I am not convinced that Islamism is "the death agony of imperial Islam ... the last wave - the last convulsion." I think Amis writes those lines more in hope than in rational conviction, giving in to the twin human instincts of believing that all problems have solutions, and that progress is inevitable.

In many respects the West really does not seem to have internalized this message. One of the many small signs of this is the MSM's insistence in calling Mohammad Khatami a moderate. Pajamas Media has an interesting video with Richard Miniter about him, entitled Murder at the Cathedral. Clearly fundamentalist Islam (which I generally call Islamism) must be combatted urgently (particularly in Europe). There has been a general debate about how to go about this, most starkly regarding the decision whether Islamist terrorism should be seen as an act of war or as a law enforcement matter. It does not exactly fall into either category and I think the best attitude is illustrated by Richard Posner's position, whose Glenn & Helen Show podcast I listened to recently, and whose new book has been garnering positive reviews (via Instapundit): in the Washington Post and in the Weekly Standard. As (the non-neocon) Dahlia Lithwick says:

The real power of Posner's effort is that he stands back and measures whether Guantanamo Bay and wiretapping are really worth it. It's proof that the best cure for partisan shrieking is a good old-fashioned game of cost-benefit analysis.

Do read both reviews.While we fine tune in what way to best fight Islamist fundamentalism, there is another extremism which all rational and moderate people should be worried about: Western extremism. Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at New York University the other day and made a few points I emphatically agree with (though I don't always agree with him). PJM correspondent and Atlas Shrugs blogger, Pamela, has videos and commentary:

Netanyahu exhorts us to:

"...repel the lies. I will not go back to those gas chambers. Not those physical ones, not those of the poisoned wells and slanders.The only way that a free society can defend itself aside from taking up arms is also to light those candles for truth.What I ask of you tonight is for each of you to light the candle of truth. You know how you do it ...flip on the internet and light many many candles of truth."

Do watch the whole thing.If there was any doubt that this ("lighting candles of truth") was badly needed (after the countless scandals and biases, which seem to always go one way), this story (via Instapundit) should clinch the deal:

Saddam Hussein had a very trusted source inside AP, according to the translation of another of the thousands of documents captured by U.S. forces that are only slowing being made public. In this particular document, the source inside AP tells Hussein about the formation of UNMOVIC, the UN weapons inspection team.

After Eason Jordan's "The News We Kept To Ourselves" admission, and Reuters' cozy relationship with assorted freedom fighters terrorists, I'm not at all surprised.Amongst numerous media other scandals, add to the list CBS's RatherGate, ABC's eagerness to be censored, Newsweek's Koran in the Can fabrication, and of course, all of the New York Times' woes, and you've got an Elite Media whose credibility across the board is crumbling.

And this is the "respectable" US media we are talking about... (which Europeans always say are pawns of Bushitler). I cringe to think about the rest. That's why there is a need to fight and "light candles of truth."

Favourite Quotes

"To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it is French." Mark Twain: Concerning The Jews, Harper's Magazine, March 1898

"This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put." Winston Churchill: Pencilled in the margin of a minute issued by a civil servant who was objecting to the ending of a sentence with a preposition and the use of a dangling participle in official documents.

"To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!" Margaret Thatcher: Conservative Party conference speech, Brighton, 10 October 1980

"Who was that lad they used to try to make me read at Oxford? Ship- Shop- Schopenhauer. That’s the name. A grouch of the most pronounced description." P. G. Wodehouse: Carry On, Jeeves – Clustering Round Young Bingo

"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city." George Burns

"Never give in - never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." Winston Churchill: Harrow School speech, 29 October 1941

"The profits of 'protection' go altogether to a few score select persons—who, by favors of Congress, State legislatures, the banks, and other special advantages, are forming a vulgar aristocracy, full as bad as anything in the British or European castes, of blood, or the dynasties there of the past." Walt Whitman: Prose Works, III. Notes Left Over - 11. Who Gets the Plunder?

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." Winston Churchill: House of Commons speech on August 20, 1940. (at the peak of the Battle of Britain, referring to the RAF airmen)

"And who knows? Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the President's spouse – and I wish him well." Barbara Bush: Wellesley College commencement address, 1 June 1990

"We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!" Winston Churchill: House of Commons speech, June 4 1940 (referring to Dunkirk)

"Earnestly hope we shall not have another war with meat-coupons and no sugar and people being killed – ridiculous and unnecessary. Wonder whether Mussolini's mother spanked him too much or too little - you never know, these psychological days." Dorothy Sayers: Busman'sHoneymoon - Diaries of the Dowager Duchess of Denver

"The gunfire around us makes it hard to hear. But the human voice is different from other sounds. It can be heard over noises that bury everything else. Even when it's not shouting. Even when it's just a whisper. Even the lowest whisper can be heard over armies – when it's telling the truth." Sydney Pollack et al.: The Interpreter [2005] (Dedication from the memoirs of Edmond Zuwanie)

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile – hoping it will eat him last." Winston Churchill